Family, Rainbows and sleepovers #weeklyroundup

Hello and welcome to another #weeklyroundup. This week saw the start of our half term here. I see from social media that many of you don't begin your holidays until the end of school today. We're actually quite lucky here as we've still got a week to go. This is because the youngest three's school combined all of the teach training days and bundled them all into one week which meant that we got 2 weeks off in October this year.

We've had a great start to our time off because for a change the lovely Mr Hazelden was off with us, it's the first time we've ever had him with us at this time of year and made for a wonderful change. And actually we haven't done an awful lot, it's just been lovely having time, not feeling like we're cramming in conversations into a short space of time.

I even managed a day with just me and the husband when my lovely mum offered to have my daughters for a whole day along with their cousins. The last time we had any time alone together was on our wedding anniversary at the beginning of September so it was really appreciated.

And now it's tine to see the other things I've loved this week:

Read

I haven't had a lot of time to read books for leisure recently as I have had quite a few novels to review but last week one of my lovely friends came to my house to borrow some books of mine to take on holiday with her and at the same time she surprised me with literally a suitcase of books for me to delve into. We've got quite similar tastes in stories so there was plenty for me to choose from.

One of those books happened to be The Husband's Secret. This is a novel that's been on my to read list for quite some time and actually it is an author that I haven't managed to read any of their works before even though I have heard many good things about Liane Moriarty. The book definitely didn't disappoint and I've decided that I'll be asking for a couple more of her books for Christmas this year from various people.

Watched

I have of course been watching the usual, Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor and I got to the end of Friday Night Dinner.

When the youngest two were at a sleepover at the weekend we sat down and watched The Conjuring with our eldest girls. Strangely all of my children are quite into scary things, there isn't much that seems to properly scare them.

And we had our own movie night over at a friends house at the start of the week. Complete with popcorn, sweets, chocolate and prosecco for the adults, we watched The Greatest Showman.

But I'm struggling to find a new series to binge watch so any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

Heard

Lots of girlie chatter!

As my children have got older we have hosted more and more sleepovers. Something which I'm more than happy to do and it does make me laugh when I happen to hear what they are talking about. Those chats have certainly evolved, now it's all about make up and which famous people they happen to fancy at the time.

And of course there is lots of giggling to be heard.

Made

When my mum bought down a rather large bag of apples straight from her tree I was worried that they'd end up going off before we could eat them all so I set myself the task to make some things with them as well as popping them in the girls' pack lunches.

I made an apple crumble as a pudding to accompany our roast dinner last week and then I went about making so apple and cinnamon muffins as I thought they'd actually make a good breakfast alternative.

They were rather delicious, with salted caramel pieces hidden inside for an extra treat, they were a big hit with the kids.

Wore

There are some items of clothing that have the ability to really make you feel good and one such item for me happened to be this rainbow dress from Primark. I'd seen it often photographed on Instagram and at the time it seemed to be sold out everywhere and going for a ridiculous price on eBay so imagine my surprise when shopping the other week, I found it in the sale for £7, a bargain.

And I had the perfect occasion to wear it to as well, a friend's children were being baptised. Now I'll admit I felt slightly over-dressed when I stepped into church but in the end I decided it didn't matter because quite frankly the dress made me feel fabulous!

And lastly ...

The husband has another archery competition on Sunday and after another week of not sleeping very well I'm planning on getting out the blankets, making some hot chocolates and having another movie day with the kids on Sunday.

What's your plans?